She explained this to Willie, and he shook his head and broke out, peevishly:
"Why the bally hell didn't you think of all this in the first place?"
"In the first place, Willie," said Persis, "you are the man of the family, and supposed to do the thinking. In the second place, I won't be sworn at."
"I wasn't swearing at you, my love. I was just swearing. Well, if you don't want to go to the polo games, where in—where do you want to go—up to the country place?"
Here was a problem. She was sure that she did not want to be alone in a country house with Willie. That would be worse than the yacht. Since she could not endure either to be alone with him or to go among crowds with him, the dilemma was perfect. Already there was another incompatibility established.
She was mad for diversion, and, being herself a polo player of no small prowess, she was frantic to see the effort of the British team to wrest back the trophy. But a stronger passion still was the determination to evade gossip.
She and Willie, therefore, sneaked from their yacht to their house in town. They astounded the servants, and there was much scurrying and whisking.
They dined together alone, though Persis was eager to be in a restaurant where there was music. She was like a child kept in after school. She flattened her nose against a window-pane and stared out at life. After dinner the prospect of an evening with Willie rendered her desperate. They could at least go to the theater somewhere. Nobody was in town; they would be quite unnoticed. But when nobody is in town the theaters close up. There was nothing they had not seen or had not been warned against. Willie proposed a roof-garden—Hammerstein's.
They went, and beheld a chimpanzee that rode various bicycles, smoked a cigar expertly, and spat with amazing fidelity to the technique of the super-ape; also a British peeress who danced in less clothes than the chimpanzee wore.
Ten Eyck was there. He tried to hide from Persis and Willie, not because he was ashamed to be seen by them, but because he was afraid that Persis and Willie would not want to be seen by him. He had cherished no illusions for the success of the match on its sentimental side, but he had expected them to see the honeymoon through. He kept out of their sight, but they stumbled on him during the intermission, when the audience crowded into a space at the back of the roof where a patient cow was milked by electricity at an uncowly hour, and where couples rowed boats up and down an almost microscopic lake.